Sunday, March 2, 2014

A New Princess Prologue: Cinderella Ponders

The tall, beautiful slender blonde woman
tapped the end of her pencil against her teeth and her perfect brows creased
together in a frown as she studied the official looking sheaf of papers spread
out in front of her on her imposing desk.

When Cinderella had originally volunteered
for the position of Headmistress at DISNEY Academy at the request of the
school’s founder, the Princesses benevolent mentor and benefactor Uncle Walt,
she had not fully realized what she was letting herself in for. The fact that she
was the only applicant for the job should have tipped her off really.

Of the available Princesses at the time
Cinderella was the best candidate even if her two fellow Princesses had
applied.

Why didn’t they apply? Being permanently
fourteen years old Snow White didn’t have the emotional or physical maturity to
take on the role, it didn’t help that every other member of The Academy,
including the students, were older than her. You could never know exactly what
the girl was thinking under that sweet, but strangely blank expression, either.

Like Cinderella, Aurora was tall, blonde
and beautiful, she was also the same age, but being raised in the forest and
home schooled by her three well meaning, but naïve aunts had not left her well
prepared for the realities of the world. She also had a tendency to fall into a
deep sleep at any time and if it went on for too long they had to call Prince
Phillip to revive her with a kiss.

Cinderella had run a household prior to
meeting Charming at the ball and been responsible for looking after her
stepmother and her two stepsisters, plus a hard working ethic had been
instilled into the girl during those years of drudgery.

Running a household, even one on a
shoestring budget the way the Tremaine house had been, did not have the
challenges that came with being the Headmistress of a school full of
Princesses, though.

Each Princess came with her own issues.
Snow was very different, she wandered around the castle and the grounds in some
sort of a daze, often accompanied by small woodland animals and birds, who
seemed to gravitate to the young sweet natured Princess, she went to class when
she felt like it and you could never tell when you may bump into her. Generally
she was quiet, if a little unnerving, but she was still in therapy after the
incident with Rapunzel and the apple pie that the long-haired, blonde girl had
baked as a sort of thank you for being accepted at The Academy. Cinderella did
have to admit that the dwarfs were useful, though. She’d be completely snowed under
by paperwork if it weren’t for Doc.

Aurora had a tendency to fall asleep mid
sentence for no discernible reason. If she was alone or in her room in the
castle it was fine, but anywhere else could and had been problematical. She did
it once while walking along the drawbridge and was sound asleep when she hit
the water. Neither of the dwarfs on guard duty could swim, and as one of them
was Sleepy, it wouldn’t have helped anyway. Sneezy couldn’t stop sneezing long
enough to raise the alarm. Fortunately Ariel had been taking her afternoon swim
at the time and prevented Aurora from drowning.

For the longest time they had difficulty
attracting new entrants. It still wasn’t advisable to mention Aurora’s protégé
Eilonwy aroundthe narcoleptic Princess.

Being a mermaid, Ariel had brought with her
a whole host of new challenges. Cinderella’s fairy godmother had provided them
with a moat that Ariel could swim in, but they’d had to change the water to
accommodate the aquatic Princess, and when Tiana had moved in and brought with
her an alligator named Louis they had to rehouse Ariel’s friend Flounder in a
bowl in Ariel’s room (which also contained a giant size fishbowl that the girl
mermaid slept in) until the trumpet playing amphibian could be persuaded not to
simply eat anything he found in the moat.

It was hard to prise Bell out of the
library, which wasn’t in itself a real problem, although she would forget to
eat if you let her. A small cry of “Oh oh!” came from a high shelf.
Cinderella’s eyes widened, and she moved quickly to grab a falling crystal vase
before it hit the floor and shattered. The girl placed the fragile ornament on
a table closer to the ground and then shouted, “Jacques! Gus!”

Two mice appeared on the Headmistress’
desk. One was tall and skinny and dressed in a red shirt and matching jacket as
well as cap, the other was shorter and stouter, he wore a tight yellow shirt
and a green cap in the same style as his fellow mouse.

The skinny mouse grinned and then pointed
at the shorter one. Gus wasn’t normally as quick on the uptake as Jacques and
it took him a moment to realize that he was being accused of something, once he
did he started pointing vociferously at Jacques.

“I don’t care which one of you did it,”
Cinderella told them sternly, and their faces fell. “You were probably in it
together. Now just sit and be quiet or I’ll tell Belle who has been nibbling on
her books.”

The mice’s eyes widened.

“Yes, I will,” Cinderella promised. “Sit,
stay!”

The blonde turned her attention back to her
papers, muttering, “As if I don’t have enough to deal with!”

Jasmine was a good, socially progressive
Princess, but she had a tendency to think the rules didn’t always apply to her
and it was hard to tell a Genie with a flying carpet that he couldn’t whisk the
girl away for a dinner date at some exotic location with Aladdin because it
didn’t set a good example. Then of course there was the panic that her pet
tiger Rajah put Belle’s horse Phillipe into until the faithful steed found out
that the tiger was in fact a vegetarian.

No matter what Cinderella did she couldn’t
get Pocahontas to sleep inside, the forest raised Princess preferred a tent or
wigwam that she had pitched in the woods that surrounded the castle. Somehow
her friend, the raccoon Meeko, didn’t seem to have any issues with going inside
and was continually trying to cadge food off the Princesses. Snow actually
encouraged it! Tiana had threatened to make a gumbo with a surprise ingredient
(the surprise being that Meeko was in it!) if he didn’t stop finding his way
into the kitchen.

Mulan could be rather standoffish, and her
dragon Mushu was almost too gregarious. However Mulan was good at teaching the
art of war to the girls and like it or not it was a lesson that Princesses
needed.

Tiana had been a welcome addition because
she could cook. Cinderella, Snow White and Belle all knew their way around a
kitchen, but Cinderella often didn’t have time, Snow White only ever cooked
using a cauldron and wouldn’t even consider making pastry ever since the near
death experience with the apple pie. Belle was too used to cooking for just
herself. The less said about the dwarfs culinary skills or lack thereof, the
better. Tiana on the other hand loved cooking for lots of people and passing
her skills on. She could sometimes be a bit touchy regarding criticism however.

The three newest Princesses all had their
own issues. With Rapunzel it all involved hair. Cinderella had never really
considered how long it took to wash and dry seventy feet of hair. Merida had a
temper and had threatened to shoot Tiana more than once, that’s when she wasn’t
stamping her feet and saying she’d run away or find a spell to turn anyone she
didn’t like into a bear. Anna of Arendelle was a sweet girl, but her snowman
friend Olaf, who was only able to survive at The Academy because Elsa Queen of
Arendelle (taking her Princess course by correspondence, ferried to and fro by
the fairies from nearby Fairy Hollow due to an arrangement with former student
and leading Fairy Hollow resident Tinkerbell) was able to give him a personal
snow flurry. He was a good natured chap, but he did leave puddles of melted
snow wherever he went from his flurry. It was still too early to tell exactly
what other challenges Anna brought. As both she and Rapunzel had spent many
years being sheltered from the world they had bonded over that.

Cinderella sighed and then she looked over
the application from the new Princess, Little Red Riding Hood of the Dark Wood
and wondered what she would be like.